Phenological knowledge related to agricultural proverbs
Agricultural proverbs have been circulated for a long time and have been recorded in many ancient books. For example, the popular agricultural proverbs, such as "Grow rice for half a year", "Water the buds of wheat, water the flowers of vegetables", "In summer, the roots are white, and the farmers eat for one hour", and "Rice is as red as a warbler, and all it needs is supplied with water", are found in the Shen Shi Agricultural Book in the late Ming Dynasty: "An inch of wheat is not afraid of water, but an inch of wheat is afraid of water". "No wheat is planted without ash" and "harvesting wheat is like putting out a fire" can be found in "Convenient Map Compilation" in the early 16th century. "It's not hot in June, and the grains don't bear fruit" and "The quilt is covered in June, and there is no rice in the field" are seen in Tianjia Wuxing in the early 14th century. "If you want wheat, you can see three whites" and "The first month is three whites, and Tian Gong laughs brilliantly", which is seen in the book "The Ruler and the Ruler" of the Tang Dynasty in the early 8th century. "If you want to know the five grains, you should look at the five trees" and "It is better to be violent than to plow without labor", as shown in Qi Min Yao Shu in the 6th century. Agricultural proverbs quoted in ancient books are often labeled as "proverbs cloud" or "ancients cloud", indicating that the quoted agricultural proverb originated earlier, and when it was, it may not always be found in the literature. At least as far as we know, some agricultural proverbs can be traced back to thousands of years ago, such as the Zhejiang agricultural proverb: "There is no abundant grass under the big tree, and there is no beautiful seedling between the big blocks", which is also seen in the Western Han Dynasty (Huan Kuan's "On Salt and Iron" in the first century BC, the fourteenth weight: "There is no abundant grass under the Maolin, and there is no beautiful seedling between the big blocks." "The shower doesn't last all day, and the hurricane doesn't end in the DPRK" is similar to "The wind doesn't end in the DPRK, and the shower doesn't end all day" in Chapter 23 of Laozi's Tao Te Ching. Because the origin of agricultural proverbs can be traced back continuously, we have reason to think that the origin of agricultural proverbs is consistent with the origin of agriculture. The origin of agriculture is much earlier than written records, so the origin of agricultural proverbs must have been before there were words. If music, dance and ballads all originate from labor, then agricultural proverbs are really an important branch of agricultural labor that is differentiated from ballads. The difference between ballads and agricultural proverbs lies in that the former pour out the thoughts and feelings of working people, that is, focus on social relations; Agricultural proverbs, on the other hand, describe the struggle between working people and nature, that is, they focus on production. This distinction is the result of gradual development, in fact, there is no clear boundary between the two. Because agricultural proverbs can also include the experience of "standing in the world" except agricultural production, and besides, agricultural proverbs can also include the experience of "standing in the world" except agricultural production. Besides, agricultural proverbs are harmonious in melody, rhyming in harmony, moving in form and full of life, and it is difficult to be completely separated from ballads. This is especially true in ancient agricultural society. For example, "July", "Futian", "Datian" and "courtiers" in The Book of Songs not only sing about farming operations, but also express farmers' feelings. With the development of agricultural production, agricultural proverbs gradually differentiated from ballads. At the same time, agricultural proverbs, which belong to pure production experience, are constantly increasing and enriching, and become an important part of guiding production.
[ Edit this paragraph] Second, the role of agricultural proverbs in production
Agricultural proverbs are the crystallization of experience accumulated by working people in their long-term production practice, which will inevitably play a certain guiding role in agricultural production. Especially in the feudal society, the working people were deprived of the right to read and write, and their experience was mainly passed down and inherited by word of mouth, in which agricultural proverbs were one aspect. For example, in the feudal society, there were no thermometers, hygrometers and other instruments of the same generation, so farmers took the growth status of perennial trees as the basis for forecasting the farming season, because the growth of perennial trees reflected certain objective climatic conditions to a certain extent, so the agricultural proverb "To know the five grains, look at the five trees first" came into being. In guiding the sowing date, there are many proverbs that reflect phenology, such as "pear blossoms are white and soybeans are planted"; "Cinnamomum camphora leaves and peach blossoms are red, and white bean seeds are good"; And "frogs croak and millet fall" and so on. More is to point out the suitable sowing time of various crops according to the 24 solar terms: for example, "the white dew is early, the cold dew is late, and the autumn equinox grass is just in time"; "White dew is white, just planting buckwheat" and so on. With these agricultural proverbs, farmers can master timely sowing. In addition, such as "beginning of winter broad bean light snow wheat, you can't catch it all your life"; Proverbs such as "planting oil in October is not enough for a wife to rub her hair" are a summary of the lessons of failure, reminding people to seize the season and not miss the farming season.
if we divide the whole process of crop production into several links, almost every link has certain agricultural proverbs. For example, from the sowing of rice, the selection of improved varieties includes "planting good rice, loving mother" and so on; Cultivating strong seedlings includes "planting rice for half a year" and so on; Transplanting techniques include "whether you can insert it or not depends on your feet", "early rice floats on the water, and late rice is inserted waist-high", and fertilization includes "early rice mud is sent down, late rice is held for three times", "light in the middle and heavy at both ends" and so on. Field management includes "touching the roots in the summer, a handful of mud and a handful of grain" and so on. Take rice as an example, there are about 5 agricultural proverbs in Zhejiang. Farmers have these agricultural proverbs, just as they now have technical guidance manuals, which have played a great guiding role. Especially among some old farmers, this habit still exists. In 1959, we learned from an old farmer in Lishui County about the local experience of sowing millet. He cited the agricultural proverb that "a needle on the head of a red millet is afraid of being shallow, but it is not afraid of being deep", and compared millet with sesame, the agricultural proverb that "sesame has two leaves on its head, but it is afraid of being deep" vividly explained the sowing depth of monocotyledons (such as millet) and dicotyledons (such as sesame). When we summed up the local experience of planting millet (locally called millet) in Pingyang County, the farmers also cited the agricultural proverb "Half the rice is harvested, but the wheat is not worth watching, and the millet is harvested by a handful", which shows that the characteristic of millet is that it is not afraid of lodging. There are countless examples like this, which proves that agricultural proverbs play a great role in guiding agricultural production.
[ Edit this paragraph] III. Characteristics of agricultural proverbs
Overview of agricultural proverbs
Agricultural proverbs are about agricultural production. Agricultural production in a broad sense includes agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, sideline production and fishing, and agriculture also includes crops, fruits and vegetables, sericulture, etc. These contents are all found in agricultural proverbs. Besides, agricultural production is inseparable from soil, fertilizer, moisture, temperature and even seasonal, meteorological and climatic conditions, which occupy a lot of content in agricultural proverbs. Agricultural production is carried out by people, so there are still many contents in agricultural proverbs that cannot be separated from the relationship between people and the experience of management. China Agricultural Proverbs collected by Fei Jiexin before liberation consists of five parts: season, meteorology, crops, breeding and proverbs. Although it is not ideal, we can see several characteristics of agricultural proverbs from this classification. According to the author's statistics of 5953 agricultural proverbs in this book. [1] There are 2961 articles belonging to the seasonal department, accounting for 4.45% of the total; There are 1556 meteorological departments, accounting for 26.22%, and 12 crop departments, accounting for 17.18%; There are 251 feeding departments, accounting for 4.23%; There are 77 proverbs, accounting for 11.91%. From the percentage of this distribution, we can see two points: First, the agricultural proverbs of meteorology and seasonality account for 2/3, which reflects the dependence of agricultural production development process on natural conditions. Sowing in time is a prerequisite for agricultural production. From slash-and-burn to modern machine farming, agricultural technology has changed a lot, and only sowing in time can not be changed at will. In order to correctly grasp the farming season, the working people have summed up rich experience and learned enough lessons for thousands of years, so the agricultural proverbs centered on seasons account for about 4%. Natural disasters such as drought, waterlogging, wind and cold are even more formidable threats in the feudal society of small-scale peasant economy, so agricultural proverbs that attempt to grasp the laws of natural disasters also account for 1/4.
Fei Jiexin's agricultural proverbs are limited to his personal conditions, and only 5,953 * * *. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Agricultural Publishing House, mainly based on Lu Ping, carried out a planned national collection of agricultural proverbs, and * * * got more than 1, articles. After consolidation and classification, * * * got more than 31,4 articles, which were published in two volumes: China Agricultural Proverbs. The first volume is the part of crops, including field crops, cotton and linen, fruits and vegetables, sericulture, beans, oilseeds and flowers. According to the author's statistics, there are about 16,2 * *; The second volume is a general introduction to animal husbandry, fishery, forestry and other parts, including soil, fertilizer, species, field management, water conservancy and meteorology, with about 15,2 articles. The statistical results of the upper and lower volumes of the book are respectively classified, which are generally similar to those of Fei Jiexin mentioned above. But the regularity is more obvious. That is to say, among all agricultural proverbs, meteorological agricultural proverbs account for the most, and * * * got 793, accounting for 25.16% of all. Followed by rice, * * * 4,573, accounting for 14.56% of the total; The third is wheat, ***3596, accounting for 11.45% of the total. The rest are scattered on various crops, and the number of strips is much less than that of rice and wheat. The proportion of the number of agricultural proverbs of rice, wheat and millet is very similar to the statistical results of the author's literature of the ancient and modern book integration. In the integration, the literature quantity of rice is also the first, and all kinds of wheat are the second, followed by millet, and the proportion of the three is more than any other crops. [2] The proportion of written records is so consistent with the proportion of farmers' oral proverbs, which is a true reflection of the laws of objective things. There are only 1,571 fruit trees and vegetables in short supply, accounting for 5.% of the total. In terms of grain, such as corn and sweet potato, it was not until the end of the Ming Dynasty that they were introduced and popularized. Corn quickly accumulated 222 pieces, of course, the proportion is not high, accounting for only .7%; 366 sweet potatoes were accumulated, accounting for 1.16%. Since ancient times, agriculture and mulberry have been given equal attention to food and clothing, and cotton is a latecomer compared with sericulture, but it has been popularized very quickly. The accumulated agricultural proverbs have surpassed sericulture, with 1,243 cotton, accounting for 3.95%. There are only 355 sericulture, accounting for 1.13%, and there should not be so few agricultural proverbs about sericulture, and the reason remains to be investigated. Among the two legs of crops and livestock, the number of agricultural proverbs in livestock is far less than that in crops, only 1,433, accounting for 4.56% of the total. This is the characteristic of food structure in agricultural areas of China, and the pressure of population growth in agricultural areas makes it impossible for agricultural areas to provide more land for raising livestock. In the agricultural proverbs of livestock, pigs are the most common, and pigs are omnivorous in the south, so they don't need pasture to graze the land. One of the outstanding points of farm proverbs for livestock is that there are many farm proverbs for identifying livestock, which are vivid and well-founded, much like Xiangma Jing and Xiangniu Jing since the Han Dynasty, but with few sentences.
sow in clear water, transplant rice seedlings in mixed water
establish autumn, pull together in small plants
dry transplanting, and live early; Grow fast, grow fast
I'm not afraid of drought, but I'm afraid that the hoe will break buckwheat for 7 days, and it will rain for 8 days
It will come in June, and I'll sell quilts and buy ash
Whether it can be inserted or not, and I'll see if your feet
buy a hundred catties, so it's better to plant a catty
in July and autumn, and apply it inside and outside to smoke
. A handful of potatoes
will plant a hill, but not a thousand hills
flowers and plants, and white rice will be planted in the field. There are valleys in the hill, and there are
thousands of dung fields. It is better to plant dung seedlings in one place
beginning of autumn one day earlier, and collect the dung jar one day earlier, so you don't have to throw it away. You cheat me if you farm for more meals
and don't fertilize. There are two
kinds of sweet potato and rice planted in corn mung beans, and the yield is high every year
the first hemp can see the seedling, the second hemp can see the chaff, and the third hemp can see the frost
when it is inserted in spring, it is carved in summer, and it is contested in spring and summer
when it is planted in beginning of autumn, it is planted in summer, and cabbage is harvested before and after beginning of winter.
The white dew is early, the cold dew is late, and the autumn equinox is the right time to plant wheat.
In winter, wheat is covered with three layers of quilts, and you sleep with steamed bread in the next year.
Second, the rhetorical methods of agricultural proverbs
Apart from the complicated changes in syntactic structure, agricultural proverbs are also rich and colorful in terms of rhetorical methods of their expressions. Farmers know how to express their experience in production technology through various rhetorical methods. Here are some examples:
Metaphor
Agricultural proverbs are good at using metaphors, so they are easy to understand and accept. There are two kinds of metaphors in agricultural proverbs, one is simile and the other is metaphor. There are many similes, such as "people are weak, longan litchi;" The ground is weak, and the river mud is grass ","cooked soil adds raw soil, like a patient eating a pig's belly ","winter snow is a wheat quilt, and the more it is pressed, the longer it will be ","broad beans cover mud, like covering cotton-padded clothes on March 9 ". Metaphor is like: "when the grass grows up, it needs snacks", which means getting fat with snacks. No matter similes and metaphors are commonly used in people's lives, they are more intimate and easy to understand.
metonymy
in agricultural proverbs, metonymy is often used, with the part representing the whole and the concrete representing the abstraction, which is more vivid. For example, "If you don't have mud legs, you will starve to death." Here, "mud legs" represent working people and "oil mouths" represent exploiters. Another example is "separated by a heavy mountain, more than one load, separated by a river, more than one reed", which means that planting in different places can increase production, and it is difficult to specify the distance and principle of planting, so the agricultural proverb is represented by "one mountain" and "one river".
Wanqu
This is a technique that is widely used in agricultural proverbs. Farmers like to use subtle words to set off their original intention, such as "cutting off the roots of wheat and breaking the grinding heart", which means that wheat needs diligent cultivation, and after cultivation, it can increase production, but he doesn't have to use explicit words such as increasing production, but when it comes to wheat processing and grinding a lot of wheat flour, it may break the grinding heart, so as to encourage people to do a good job in field cultivation. Others, such as "Dragon Dance in the Wheat Field, Wheat is the same", refer to the suppression of wheat seedling stage; "there is no bottom in the summer heat, and there is no rice in the valley" means that not baking the field will cause lodging and chafing; "It will be sunny for three days in sesame field, so go home and wash the oil bottle" means that drought is beneficial to sesame harvest; "beginning of winter grows beans with a chopstick, and two beans for a pair" is a warning not to sow in time; "Gold comes from the corner of the field" encourages people to make full use of the gap to grow various crops; "Cut the rapeseed sadly and reap the sesame seeds with tears" means that sesame and rape are easy to thresh and lose a lot when they are ripe.
extravagance
this is also a common technique in agricultural proverbs, which is often used to emphasize the importance of a certain measure or a certain link. For example, it emphasizes the importance of rape wax fertilizer: "It is not as good as pouring wax manure once"; Emphasizing the importance of rice irrigation before and after the summer heat, we use "thousands of cars are not as good as one car in the summer heat"; Emphasizing the importance of fertilization in paddy fields, he said, "We will give a hill instead of a thousand hills. It is better to give a hill than a thousand hills." When you encounter this kind of extravagant agricultural proverb, you can't interpret it literally, but you should realize that it is an exaggeration of words.
analogy
Generally speaking, things are compared to people, which is infectious. For example: "Soybean is deaf, and the more you hoe, the more you get through"; Actually, it means that soybean needs intertillage, and its roots and nodules can grow well. "Wheat's ass itches, and the more it grows, the more willing it is" means that repression promotes tillering.
reduplication
is a common expression in agricultural proverbs. For example: "more slapping, cutting rice; Shake more and cut rice and wine "; "The head is piled flat, the second is digging the roots, and the third is holding the round", "The rice is yellow and the owner owes it bean cake money"; "All kinds of sweet potatoes and rice are good at both ends of the year"; "Corn marries, children and grandchildren"; "The wheat ridge is narrow and narrow, and there is not half an acre of wheat, and the wheat scab is wide and swinging, and one acre is worth half an acre"; "long summer sowed, picked cotton blossoming fat, sown small full, picked cotton collapsed"; "The white dew is fascinating, and the autumn equinox is full of rice" ... and so on.
it is convenient to omit